The handling of articles frequently involves providing individual or a plurality of articles with an outer packaging, for instance, a cardboard packaging.
In the case of individual articles, this is carried out for their improved protection and/or for their improved sales presentation.
In the case of a plurality of articles, a bundle of a plurality of articles is additionally achieved by the outer packaging.
Bundles represent an effective way of enabling simultaneous handling of a plurality of articles, for instance, for facilitating the transport of a plurality of articles at the same time. For many articles, such as beverage containers, for example, bundles of a plurality of articles held together thus represent the most frequent type of sales units.
The articles can be objects, for instance, such as packaged or unpackaged objects, cardboard packagings, containers, such as beverage bottles or cans, or in themselves bundles, in turn, of a plurality of objects, in which the objects of a bundle can be held together, for instance, by means of an embracing around the periphery of a group of objects, such as, for instance, a strapping, an outer packaging, such as a wrapping, a shrink tube, or a cardboard packaging or a carrying rack, such as a beverage crate, to name but a few conceivable embodiments.
If a plurality of articles is assembled in an outer packaging, these articles can be placed into the outer packaging individually, one after the other, or groupwise, for instance, already according to their arrangement or according to a part of their arrangement in said outer packaging.
In handling articles, for instance, in food technology and/or beverage technology and/or packaging technology and/or in the food industry and/or beverage industry and/or packaging industry, pacing, i.e. being able to handle as many articles as possible within an as short as possible time span, represents a significant cost factor. The faster the pacing, the higher is the article throughput, and the better is thus the utilization of the machines, facilities, and devices intended for this purpose. Pacing can thus be described as the ratio of the number of articles to the period of time within which this number of articles is handled.
In order to be able to achieve high pacings, fully automatic devices, also called transplacing machines or, termed for short transplacers, are used in the packaging technology and in the packaging industry for transferring articles, which transplacers, in connection with the staging of outer packagings, continuously or discontinuously remove the article or the articles respectively to be transferred into an outer packaging within fractions of seconds from an infeed of articles being transported by means of, for instance, one or more conveyors in, for instance, one or more article flows of continuous, immediately consecutive articles or articles that are already grouped according to their number and/or already spaced apart from one another according to their later arrangement in the outer packaging, and transfer them into the outer packaging.
If this involves closeable outer packagings into which the articles are transferred, closing of the outer packagings can be carried out simultaneously with or subsequently to placing the complete number of articles to be transferred into the outer packaging.
An apparatus for handling articles that are fed to a continuously operating packaging machine is known from DE 42 04 993 C1. The apparatus comprises a transplacing machine with a plurality of gripper heads for respectively one group of articles to be transferred into an outer packaging having the form of a beverage crate. Each gripper head is arranged at a lever mechanism consisting of respectively four levers articulatedly connected with each other about parallel horizontal lever axes, two of which levers are pivotably arranged about likewise horizontal lever axes at a pivotal central carrier, which is rotatably driven about a central axis running in parallel to the lever axes. Arranged in parallel to the central carrier is a disk with control cams, into which disk pins engage, which are arranged at a part of the levers of each lever mechanism, and thus control a motion sequence of the gripper heads during a revolution of the central carrier about the central axis. The apparatus in addition comprises a first conveyor in the form of a horizontal conveyor belt, which feeds articles to the transplacing machine in a transport direction normal to the central axis and to the lever axes running in parallel thereto, and also, running below the first conveyor, a second conveyor, which transports the beverage crates in transport direction, too. The articles being transported by the conveyor belt are arranged in rows, are brought to a halt by a stop means at the end of the conveyor belt, and are received by one of the gripper heads after another. After a group of articles is received by a gripper head, the gripper head moves along in the transport direction of the conveyor belt, lifts up the received articles above the end of the conveyor belt while the stop means at the end of the conveyor belt is lowered, and subsequently lowers the articles to a subjacent level into a beverage crate being transported by means of the second conveyor, which continuously transports beverage crates in a horizontal direction. Subsequent to the lowering and controlled by the control cams, the gripper head first carries out a movement in parallel to the transport direction, while the articles, which were received by the gripper head and placed into an appropriate beverage crate being transported by the second conveyor, are released. Meanwhile, further articles advance at the end of the first conveyor. The transfer of the articles being received by a gripper head is completed by the gripper head being raised again, even while it is still moving in transport direction, and the filled beverage crate is transported away following the second conveyor. The further articles, which have advanced in the meantime, can be received by a further gripper head and disposed in a further, following beverage crate.
A similar apparatus is known from DE 43 29 179 A1, with the difference that the gripper heads are not arranged at a central carrier rotating about a horizontal central axis, but rather at a circulating traction means running in a vertical plane.
A similar apparatus is known from DE 33 39 045 A1, with the difference that the gripper heads are circulatingly guided in a horizontal direction at a chain, and are lowered and raised again as well as closed and opened by means of slides, which are guided along horizontally circulating rails.
A disadvantage of such apparatuses for handling articles is their large space requirement in the direction of transport as well as the limited pacing, as only one group of articles after the other is respectively transferred into a beverage crate.
A device for transferring articles is known from DE 102 10 353 A1, which device has a gripper head of a plurality of tulip-shaped grippers arranged at a six-axis robot arm, which tulip-shaped grippers are driven individually or groupwise movably in relation to each other within a plane formed by the tulip-shaped grippers during the transferring of the articles.
Even by means of such an apparatus, only one outer packaging after the other can be filled, thus greatly limiting the pacing.